[Korrespondent] Since 2014, the CIA has begun a large-scale transformation of the Main Intelligence Directorate and the Security Service of Ukraine, and now Ukrainian agents are carrying out high-profile operations, writes The Washington Post.
The US Central Intelligence Agency has been developing Ukraine's intelligence services for almost 10 years. The Americans “rebuilt from scratch” the Soviet system in the SBU and GUR and now Ukrainian spies are carrying out large-scale and incredible operations. The Washington Post spoke about this in its article . In addition, the material reveals details of high-profile special operations of Ukrainian agents.
The article, the journalists say, is based on interviews with more than two dozen current and former Ukrainian, American and Western intelligence and security officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.
CIA-UKRAINE PARTNERSHIP
According to the publication, cooperation between the CIA and Ukraine began after political protests in 2014, which forced pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych to flee the country, and Russia annexed Crimea and armed separatists in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions.
As Ukrainian and American agents said, at first the United States feared that the SBU was “still heavily operated by the FSB,” so the CIA collaborated with the Ukrainians to create an entirely new department that would focus on so-called “active measures” operations against Russia and would be isolated from other departments of the SBU.
The new unit was dubbed the Fifth Directorate to distinguish it from the four long-standing units of the Ukrainian service. A Sixth Directorate has since been added to deal with the British intelligence agency MI6, officials told the publication.
Overall, the CIA has spent tens of millions of dollars since 2015 to turn Ukraine's Soviet forces into powerful allies against Moscow, journalists say. The agency provided Kiev with advanced surveillance systems, trained recruits at facilities in Ukraine as well as the United States, built new headquarters and shared intelligence on a scale unimaginable before Russia annexed Crimea.
TRANSFORMATION OF UKRAINIAN MILITARY INTELLIGENCE
In parallel with the processes in the SBU, the CIA decided to start a more ambitious project with the military intelligence of Ukraine, notes The Washington Post.
"We figured that the GUR was a smaller, nimble organization where we could have more influence. The GUR was our little baby. We gave them all new equipment and training," said a former US intelligence official who worked in Ukraine.
According to him, the GUR officers “were young guys, not Soviet-era KGB generals,” “while the SBU was too big to reform.”
Beginning in 2015, the CIA began such a large-scale transformation of the GUR that within a few years, “we rebuilt it from scratch,” the former US intelligence officer added.
Newcomers were trained at facilities in Ukraine and, subsequently, in the United States. They were trained from "clandestine maneuvers behind enemy lines" to "armed platforms and explosives" schemes.
Concerned that outdated GUR facilities were likely compromised by Russian intelligence, the CIA paid for new headquarters buildings for the GUR's "special forces" unit and a separate directorate responsible for electronic espionage.
Thanks to the re-equipment, revolutionary capabilities have appeared in the power steering. In one day, the service could intercept 250–300 thousand individual messages from the Russian military and the FSB. There was so much information that the operatives could not manage it. These data sets were transferred to the CIA and NSA. Investments in the project amounted to millions of dollars.
Subsequently, the GUR developed networks of sources in the Russian security apparatus, including the FSB unit responsible for operations in Ukraine.
LIQUIDATIONS IN RUSSIA
As the publication writes, citing sources, over the past 20 months, the SBU and the Main Intelligence Directorate have committed dozens of murders of Russian officials in the occupied territories, possible Ukrainian collaborators, officers behind the front line and known supporters of the war in the depths of Russia.
Among those liquidated, according to American journalists, are the former commander of the Krasnodar submarine of the Black Sea Fleet of the Russian Navy, Sergei Rzhitsky, and the Russian military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky.
The publication spoke in detail about the operation of the SBU and the Main Intelligence Directorate to eliminate Russian propagandist Daria Dugina, daughter of propagandist and “Putin ideologist” Alexander Dugin, near Moscow.
The article says that the purpose of the deal was to eliminate Dugin himself. He and his daughter were expected to travel together, but the propagandist got into another car. Despite this, Ukrainian officials noted that Daria was not a harmless victim, because she supported the war against Ukraine, like her father.
Journalists claim that the explosives were smuggled into Russia in a hidden compartment in a cat box in the car of Natalia Vovk and her 12-year-old daughter. Investigators in the Russian Federation named the woman as the main suspect. However, the publication did not indicate whether she was directly involved in the explosion.
The sources also did not note where Natalya Vovk is now and whether she managed to leave Russia after Dugina’s bombing. According to the publication, Vovk was partly motivated by what the Russians did to her native Mariupol.